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Which is nearly as overused an expression as ‘pushing the envelope,’ and ‘No, Karen, passive-aggressive e-mails to friends who are too busy to call you every day to see how you are doing in the scary uenemployed world don’t actually get you what you want.” Oh, oops, that second one is only overused on me.

In talking to M. today, I mentioned how my blog is veering off of the job searching topic.

“Sometimes my particular job searching is not that interesting,” I say.

“Well, just write that,” she suggests.

“No, that would be dull. And I need to keep writing as the blog is all I have in this crazy mixed up world.” I shouted that last bit in a melodramatic but not passive aggressive voice.

“Okay, then,” she responded and then we played Scrabble. Lost. I lost.

It’s been lovely and sunny and cold the last few days, with more of the same for tomorrow. So, a walk on kits. beach today with M. and a walk on same beach with B. tomorrow.

Oh, soap operas. I can’t really cope with them anymore although I grew up with them and I find the thought of them comforting. I find reading Soap Opera Digest like a natural Ativan (I know, I know). I try not to buy it weekly because it is like $5 but it comforts the hell out of me. Ours is not to reason why.

However, I can’t seem to tolerate watching an entire soap opera hour. I tune in sometimes to the Young and the Restless, the old stalwart I’ve watched since 1984. At the time, my sister refused to watch All My Children because I had been the one to get my mother hooked on it. She wanted to be separate I guess and have her own thing. But I digress. I can’t watch all these fairly bad actors screaming and crying all of the time. I mean it just goes on and on and on. And on. It’s vaguely depressing. Although having said that, I think I model some of my relationship behaviour after soaps. Drama, shouting at times, ‘oh yeah!’ saying and the like.

The last few years has seen a bloodletting of soaps. Four were cancelled after a zillion years on the air (sniffle, As the World Turns) and other soaps are firing and hiring at what Soap Opera Digest tells me is an alarming rate. It’s like my job was at the end except completely different. You get the idea.

So one of the actresses from one of the defunct soaps thought, wait for it, outside of the box. She took some of the other actors/actresses from that soap and others and started a web soap. She charges subscribers $10 per season. It is a brand new thing, this idea of web serials and she is getting in at the outset. Smart businesswoman. She switched tv soaps after the defunct one but then got fired off the other one when it restructured. So, smart woman, she still has the web soap of which she is the originator and executive producer. She puts the first episode of each season on youtube for free and I’ve checked them out. Oh sure, it’s the same old soapy stuff but somehow new, especially the new season. She’s obviously made some money money because it looks so much better.

So, I felt vaguely encouraged by this. I mean really, she could have, I don’t know, do whatever fired soap opera stars do when there are no other soaps to go to. Hmmm, what would that be? But she didn’t she, wait for it, thought outside of the box.

Two of my former co-workers are also changing what working for them looks like. One is getting her photography business going and the other is getting a personal trainer/nutritionist business off of the ground. It’s not easy and it is a lot of work and may or may not fly, but they are trying.

Recently, as I send endless resumes into the black hole and even some freelance pieces there as well and as I sit around on my own for the zillionth hour, I’ve thought about being dramatic and saying screw it and actually going to Saudi Arabia or Japan to teach English. But not yet. I really really think there is a new way for me, a new thing for me to do to make a living. My clarity about this is not there yet and I tend to get bogged down by, uh, reality perhaps and my own head. And yet . . . hope. And hopefully it isn’t just magical thinking.